Instruments, Retractable Gear and Tailwheels - Oh My!

It’s time for a new post. Here is some insight into my current training and flying.

After I got back from flying with the pilot friend below, I decided I needed to start learning how to fly some of the other airplanes in the club. We have 3 planes which I cannot fly right now, and 2 of them are Cessna 182s. These have significantly more horsepower than the 172 I’ve been flying and with a partial load of fuel and 2 people in the plane that thing can climb FAST! I’ve never had to pitch so high in order to maintain a climb speed below 90 kts. Anyway, back to the beginning.

Lenny and I were planning a trip to the Bahamas with Indy Aero. That is a flight school over on the east side of Indianapolis. The plan was to head down to Ft. Lauderdale and then over to Long Island, Bahama. We would stay for 3 days and then come back up. It would have been pretty fantastic… Too bad Lenny and I couldn’t find a third person to join us. We needed the third for cost displacement purposes. In preparation for this trip, I decided we would rather fly down in a little bit larger and faster planes, in comparison with the little Cessna 172.

So, I started my training for the Cessna 182s. I had to do 5 hours in a C182 for the insurance company to let me fly it. I had about 93 hours total time when I started my training in them, so I flew N146K a few times to make sure I was at 100 hours when I finished my five in the 182s. John Oot was my instructor for the two flights I’ve done so far in the 182s. One was in N182SV which is a 182S with standard steam gauges and one was in N721ZA which is a Garmin G1000 cockpit. The G1000 is pretty neat, but cost more than the other 182.

I flew over to Decatur, IL to hang out with my buddy Lenny. He got to go up in the plane with me this time; unlike last time I visited when he had to stay on the ground because I was still a student pilot. We cruised around the lovely city of Decatur and then hung out at his apartment until dinner time. I flew back home after dinner and added about 3 hours to the logbook. Lenny loved flying and can’t wait to do it himself some day.

I am starting to think about what I want to do next as a pilot and have landed on 2 things. Instrument rating, complex endorsement and tailwheel endorsement. I cannot wait for the time that I am able to fly by instrument reference alone. It will be a challenging and rewarding experience, but I need to save money before that can happen. It’s about 40 hours of flying, and at least 20 of instructing. I’ll be starting with about 3.2 from my previous instruction time. I want to get the complex endorsement so that I can fly the other 172 because it has retractable gear. Maybe I’ll see if I can combine some of the required 10 hours with my instrument time. That would be fantastic. The tailwheel would be fun. I picture this as a gift to myself where I fly somewhere in the morning, train for a couple hours, stay overnight, train for a couple more hours and fly home with the endorsement. Maybe I’ll do that for my birthday gift to myself?

That’s all for now, and as they always say: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.